Oh this is a play? Naima Khan is more excited about the dehydrated potato snack.
Smash! at Menier Chocolate Factory is about as lacklustre as the instant mashed potatoes from the same decade as its conception. With such a great group of actors on stage, you'd expect a great ensemble performance. So to find that Tom Conti is one of the few good things in this play about a failing musical is disappointing to say the least.
Written by Jack Rosenthal and based on his experiences with the dud Bar Mitzvah Boy, Smash! sees a collection of eccentrics throwing hundreds of thousands of pounds at a production that's doomed from the first re-write.The play follows the efforts of exhausted theatre producer Theo (Conti) as he puts together the pieces of what he hopes is the next West End musical hit. His manner and lines are great and consistent and he gets enough stage time for us to start caring about what happens to him. The success of which is proved toward the end when we find out just how exhausted Theo is (that might sound like a spoiler but it's not).
Richard Schiff as acclaimed musical composer Bebe spends most of his time ridiculing fashion-forward director Stacey, played well by Cameron Blakely. Stacey has the arduous task of creating something moving from a shoddy adaptation of some chick lit by the miscast Natalie Walter as writer Liz. To top it off, Josh Cohen is thrown into the mix as lyricist Mike.
Mike's lines are convoluted, Liz's lines are dull, Bebe's lines are mean but never amusing and Stacey becomes highly irritating and tiresome. Conti on the other hand maintains Theo's sweet if ineffectual manner and brings some real human emotion to the story. Even so, he's outdone by supporting actress Carrie Quinlan who gets about ten minutes on stage.
Quinlan provides the much needed outsider. She plays a hilarious waitress looking into this world of narcissistic, pompous creatives and brings an everyday simplicity to their high octane dramatics. She is the audience coming face to face with a group of obnoxious theatre-makers with more money than sense. It's the relief we need, but it's short lived.
Also disappointing is the fact that we never get to see any of the musical they're creating. Surely an obvious source of humour are the orchestra working overtime, the actors faced with a dozen re-writes to their script and the crew who are no doubt taken for granted. Smash! trundles along throwing out the occasional one liner, but it's generally a humdrum show and a waste of such great actors.
Smash! runs at Menier Chocolate Factory until 8th May 2011.
Image: Catherine Ashmore
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